Some Suggestions from Google About the Content Network
1:22 pm in Contextual Advertising, Google AdWords by brad
I recently had a long conversation with Google (including the content PM) about the content network.
Here are a few suggestions from Google about the content network (most of these should not surprise anyone):
- Only the first 50 words in an AdGroup are used to determine its theme
- When an AdGroup has a large keyword list, Google’s matching isn’t as good and can get confused
- If an AdGroup is only shown on content, then it can be very useful to use more general words
- All keywords are treated as broadmatch when matching the AdGroup’s theme for content matching
- The Google recommended content bid is usually 75% of the search bid
- The typical content CPA (which I’m not sure if I can share so no numbers) is not significantly different (less than 10%) from search and content
- Of course, this is significantly impacted by bidding content and search differently
- It can be very useful to use site targeting with CPC bidding for ensuring your ads are shown on the highest converting content match websites
Content match resources:
- Search Ads & Contextual Ads Are Different! You Need To Treat Them Separately
- How to optimize a contextual search advertising campaign
- Block low quality traffic
- Peak behind the curtain to see to learn what AdSense sites are doing for you
- About smart pricing
On a side note, I finally responded to the comments about quality score and exact match impressions.














Thanks for sharing. I just started working on the content network for my PPC program, and this post supported a few of my ideas.